To:G. V. CHICHERIN AND L. M. KARAKHAN

Written:Written on October 10, 1918Published:First published in 1965 inCollected Works, Fifth Ed., Vol. 50.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1975,

      Moscow,Volume 44,

      pages152b-153a.Translated:Clemens DuttTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

ComradesChicherin and Karakhan

Regardingthe Note to Wilson, I think it should be sent.

Writeit in detail, politely, but caustically, saying:
in any case we consider it our duty to propose peace—even
to governments of capitalists and multimillionaires—in
order to try to stop the bloodshed andto open the eyes of the
peoples.

Thefall of Kazan, Simbirsk, Syzran and Samara has
obviously exploded such-and-such rumours....

Dothe capitalists want some of the forests in the north,
part of Siberia, interest on 17 thousand
millions?[2]If so,
then surely they won’t make a secret of it. We propose
to you: state outright, how
much[1]?

Regarding the Brest
peace—Germany will agree to withdraw her troops. What’s
the matter then? Do you want to replace the German troops
withyour owntroops?

Isuggest that you immediately draft such a Note, and
we shall discuss it
together.[3]

[[}}N.B.Pravdawanted to publish my article against Kautsky
morning. Did you receive from Sverdlov my note
asking for 12 copies to be sent to Joffefor Berzin and
Vorovsky, for them to publish as a leaflet? and to have these
dispatched Friday evening?]]

Whatnews is there from
Litvinov?[4]

Whathas been done about publishingJapaneseleaflets?

Greetings,Yours,Lenin

P.S.Wecantalk things over on the telephone.

[1]Thewords “how much” are in English in the original.—Ed.

[2]Leninis alluding to the debts of the tsarist and bourgeois
Provisional governments to the imperialists of Britain, France, the
U.S.A. and other countries. By a decree of the All-Russia
Central Executive Committee dated January 21 (February 3), 1918,
all foreign loans of the tsarist and Provisional governments were
annulled.

[3]TheNote to Woodrow Wilson, President of the U.S.A., was
dispatched on October 24, 1918 (seeDokumenty vneshnei politiki
SSSR, Vol. I, 1957, pp. 531–39).

[4]M.M.Litvinov, Plenipotentiary of the R.S.F.S.R. in Great
Britain, was arrested by the British Government as a hostage for Bruce
Lockhart, British Vice-Consul in Moscow, who was arrested on
September 3, 1918, for counter-revolutionary activities against
the Soviet Republic. In October 1918 Litvinov was exchanged for
Lockhart and returned to Soviet Russia.